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Mike writes "Recently San Francisco, San Jose, and Oakland unveiled a massive concerted effort to become the electric vehicle capitol of the United States. The Bay Area will be partnering with Better Place to create an essential electric vehicle infrastructure, marking a huge step towards the acceptance of electric vehicles as a viable alternative to those that run on fossil fuels." Inhabitat.com has some conceptual illustrations and a map showing EV infrastructure, such as battery exchange stations, stretching from Sacramento to San Diego — though this is far more extensive than the Bay Area program actually announced, which alone is estimated to cost $1 billion.

The problem isn't that SF wants to be electric-friendly, or even environmentally friendly. The problem is that they are doing it simply to cash in on a trendy idea. The union bosses responsible for building this grid will charge SF taxpayers billions to produce a sub-par grid, that will need constant repair, and that is unlikely to be utilized.

Why? Because the same people who promote electric cars, are also the people that recoil from even the word "nuclear"... and thus ensure that while the rest of the world forges ahead in power generation technology, we are stuck with 30+ year old inefficient uranium-guzzlers.

Perhaps people should consider that it's better to do things because they are the right thing, not because they are the "in thing".

Because the same people who promote electric cars, are also the people that recoil from even the word "nuclear"... and thus ensure that while the rest of the world forges ahead in power generation technology, we are stuck with 30+ year old inefficient uranium-guzzlers.

That's not true. Some of us promote electric cars, along with a renewable energy infrastructure which would include nuclear power, in a safe and responsible way.

Indeed. Modern Feeder-Breeder reactors are safe, environmentally friendly and efficient.

They can not only produce 10 times more energy for a given supply of uranium, but they could cure the worlds problem of disposing of long term nuclear waste by using it as recycled fuel. Not only this, but what little waste is produced has a short enough half-life to be a threat for a manageable few hundreds of years instead of thousands. They do not have the land use ecological impact that solar does.

Combined with balanced use of solar thermal and tapping Americas northern and offshore oil and natural gas reserves, it presents us the option of becoming completely independent of both foreign energy and dirty coal that we currently burn (fun fact: the average US coal plant releases more radioactive waste into the environment than a conventional nuclear power plant).

The infrastructure SF is implementing is admirable. The vision I have for a good future also includes electrified railways and highways with charging rails that allow drivers to run off of grid power on longer trips, allowing us to remove the use of oil as a significant factor in transportation cost throughout the continental US even with the current generation of relatively low power density batteries.

They can not only produce 10 times more energy for a given supply of uranium

It's between 60-100 times and that is without taking into they can use the depleted uranium that is left over from the enrichment ( if you enrich the uranium from 0.7% to 2.5% you're left with a bunch of depleted uranium so the total quantity of natural uranium used is 3.5 times the content of teh fuel rods ).

Thus if you compare it with a PWR running at 2.5% enrichment and consuming 1% of the enriched fuel rod, then a breeder will be able to extract about 100 times the energy from the same fuel rod, but if you consider the consumption of natural uranium it's even more than that by up to a factor of 3.5. Now you could of course recycle the plutonium as MOX in traditional reactors, which would not be as efficient, but this is where the figure of 60 times comes from.

However, that only considers the heat generated, most breeder designs also operate at higher temperatures than present reactors so they get a better electric conversion efficiency ( 40%-45% as compared to 30%-35% for PWRs ) so you gain another 28% or so there.

Additionally most designs of breeders seem to be able to use thorium which is about 4 times as abundant as uranium. (thou some thermal designs, like CANDU , might have this ability as well ).

Thus depending on if you are interested in heat or electricity, and depending on which of the many designs used today you compare with, and depending on if you want to consider the possibility of using Thorium, breeders could produce between 60 and 1600 times as much energy from available fissile material as could traditional designs.

Of course in practice this is somewhat irrelevant since even the low estimate would easily cower present energy demand for thousands of years. Even the existing nuclear waste contains enough uranium to last a century or more.

Combined with balanced use of solar thermal and tapping Americas northern and offshore oil and natural gas reserves, it presents us the option of becoming completely independent of both foreign energy and dirty coal

Have a look at Geodynamics in Queensland, Australia. They're new, and they generate lots of energy from hot rocks. You could tap the hot rocks near Yellowstone and make Montana and Wyoming the energy centres for your country.

The only estimates I've seen on that order assume use of nuclear power at the present rate, the estimates of the total extractable supply of fuel, and (for the "few thousands") complete replacement with the most advanced reactor designs. They don't account for any increase in nuclear energy use even to keep the current share of total energy use, they certainly don't factor in the fuel use for nuclear power actually substantially replacing any oth

You do realize that California's completely unique zero-emissions standards were instrumental in getting electric cars created in the first place, right? That California has been investing heavily in alternative car reasearch including pure electric, hybrid, and hydrogen technology?

SF is not doing this simply to cash in on a trendy idea. As far back as I can remember, alternative fuel stations have been a priority. While most states have 1 or 2 Hydrogen fueling stations planned for some point in the future, according to the National Hydrogen Association [hydrogenassociation.org] California has 28 currently active.

San Francisco has been pushing alternative vehicle technologies for years. Just because one aspect is now coming to fruition doesn't mean it is a cynically shortsighted cash grab. It may still be an underutilized overpaid attempt to slay a windmill, but it is completely in line with the bay area's ongoing and slightly quixotic idiom.

I don't think you understand what this new electrical grid is all about. This project is about a dynamic grid, one that uses constant-update price changes and continuous feedback systems to self-stabilize.

Let's say that you plug your car in when you get home, at about 6:00 PM. You know, when everybody and their uncle is busy burning power for home heating, TVs, and getting ready for dinner. The price of electricity is high, and your car, in constant communication with the grid, doesn't begin charging until the price of electricity drops around 10 PM.

This continuous feedback loop can tie in through your home heating, your refrigerator, etc. so that they shut off during periods when the electricity is in peak demand, and work extra when juice is cheap.

This reduces strain on the power grid, and makes better use of existing resources which are today massively overbuilt simply to handle the 10 minutes during the year when load is at its highest.

This solves a number of very real problems. For example, Wind power is very bad for power grids when it supplies more than about 10% of the total power fed into the grid - wind gusts cause voltage surges and low-grade brownouts that destabilize the power grid.

However, if you had a large number of distributed, high-amperage charge/discharge power storage units (such as a bunch of electric cars!) you could use them to act as electrical inertia to absorb sudden spikes in power.

The net effect will be a cheaper, more reliable power grid, one that could even stay running for short periods of time even if the mains to the power plants are cut, simply because the affected area would see a dramatic spike in the price of electricity, causing everything non-essential to shut off, while the electric vehicles would start backfeeding electricity, earning a profit for their owners.

"You're just substituting one energy source for another. You're not doing anything about the energy shortage."

Yes you are. It's a lot more efficient to have convert all your chemical energy into electricity at one central spot than to have millions of engines that the vehicles have to carry around with them. I believe the efficiency factor is something like 60%. Besides, there are non-chemical ways to generate electricity.

A calculation of the german version of the AAA, the ADAC, showed that the electric smart that is currently on the road, would actually create more CO2 per km than the combustion engine version, IF the power plant was solely coal based (which is a popular power plant in germany at the moment).
I also find if fascinating that the hydrogen for hydrogen production is currently produced by transforming oil into hydrogen and... CO2. It is the most efficient and economic process to do it like that. Sure, at one point in time you could do create hydrogen by electrolysis of water. But in the mean time, because money is an inevitable driving force, it will be made the CO2-producing way.
Or, how biofuels will end up competing the farming of food and might lead to difficult hunger problems. All in all, these are exciting times, and for every alternative the effects of the complete life circle on environment and society should be considered....

The land is exhausted. That requires different plantings to repair some of the damage - extra tilling, a lot of fertilizer.

Rebuilding can take decades - consider the dust bowls of the thirties.

3 Green space. Conservation.

The land may be marginal for commercial agriculture. That doesn't mean it has no value as wild habitat or as a buffer zone against suburban development. Politically in the states, "subsidies to the family farm" is an easier sell than a government-owned "land trust."

"Marginal for agriculture" usually implies a shortage of water, distance from major markets, and a host of other problems that will show up later - in what you pay for gas, electric, water, sewage service, and so on.

A calculation of the German version of the AAA, the ADAC, showed that the electric smart that is currently on the road, would actually create more CO2 per km than the combustion engine version, IF the power plant was solely coal based

This did not seem quite right, so I ran the numbers for the electric and non-electric versions of the MINI:

You lose efficiency when you transfer the power into the batteries and back out again. If you do all the math, using a coal fired plant to power an electric car uses almost the same amount of chemical energy (it's about 26% efficient, 40% for the coal plant and 72% for the battery/motor, and 90% for the power inverter, while a conventional engine is around 20%) but generates more CO2. The 60% you cite is for a combined cycle natural gas plant, but that's not where we get most of our power.

State governments, especially California, just can't afford $1B projects. But the Feds sure can. Because they are trying to counter a deflationary spiral, they are printing money as fast as they can and giving it to banks.

Compared to what they've been giving away, $1B is nothing. They really should consider throwing some of that over to CA. [It will create JOBS and reduce foreign oil dependency, Mr. Obama!]

You can be sure that that is exactly what this initiative, and others soon to follow, are counting on. That's all well and good, but hopefully the Fed is smart enough to consolidate all such proposals so that the money is spent in a coordinated fashion that benefits the national economy, not just local interests.

Actually, the difference between states and the Feds is that the states require themselves to balance their budgets. The Feds are actually in worse overall financial shape debt-wise, but are much more liquid by virtue of the size of their credit cards.

California has an economy so large that if it were an independent nation, it would still have one of the top ten economies in the entire world. California actually has a larger economy than the entire nations of Canada or Russia. In other words, there's a lot of money in California, which means a lot of taxes being collected.

I'm not sure why you would say, "especially California," considering its economy is substantially larger than any other state in the union. Are you indicating that the state should spend its funds elsewhere? That we are suffering so much disproportionately more than anywhere else? I'm not sure.

At least spending a billion for this will produce something useful and will provide some jobs. It sounds like a bargain compared to $700+ billion to keep the bankers from having to move to smaller mansions.

A bunch of banks packaged mortgage products together under a very elegant (and beautiful imho) design that nicely divvied up the risk and reward based on the unique, individual needs of various parties.

You need to go back to school since most of what you say makes no sense or is contradicted by facts.

They have gotten fired, seen their firms go down in flames, or seen their pay reduced SIGNFIGANTLY.

Yeah, that's why the execs at the banks being bailed out got $20 billion in bonuses this year.

now, because of BASELESS fears, no one wants to buy the instruments at their FAIR market price, so now they're insolvent

Then why don't YOU buy as many of them as you can since they are selling at an "unfair" price? Don't you want free money? They are selling cheap because noone wants to lend in an environment of high foreclosures, bankruptcies, and falling home values.

So please, shut your damn mouth and stick to a topic you actually understand -- like computers. And please leave the finance system to the professionals.

I have a masters degree in business. What's yours in? The "sub-prime" problem is named that because it is an attempt to blame poor people. It was all old rich white men that used deregulation to hide bad investments. Bad loans were made by brokers. They were quickly sold off to smaller organizations who bundled them and sold them. The bundles were t

Mass transit is the answer - not just BART - REAL mass transit. I cannot stress enough that if one travels to Japan and sees for oneself how fucking cool and efficient the Japanese mass rail system is - billion dollar proposals like this would die at conception.

I like private transport - a lot. I just think that it has its place, and that place is no where near 100%. From my time in Japan, I'd say it's less than 10%.

Because people do like going to the same places quite often - the music/bar district ('bout every town I've been in has had one), the university, the business district, the industrial areas, the shopping malls, the grocery stores. And with enough mass transit outlets, you can even get to Aunt Tillie's house pretty easily.

I rode the Metro in the DC area - and freaking hated it. It was like riding with all of the grey people of Trantor - everyone's personal space invaded because of the cattle-car approach to it all.

Mass transit doesn't have to be that way.

We might not like each other at first face-to-face. I'd rather ignore you sitting or standing next to you on a train than have you driving next to me in murderous traffic. (The you in that sentence is strictly rhetorical.)

One thing to remember though, Japan is the 10th largest nation population-wise, jammed in an area smaller than California.

As of 2003, Tokyo alone had 32 million people shoved into 8,000 sq km, where New York New York had a paltry 20 million in a spacious 18,000 sq km.

Those sorts of living conditions resemble Asimov's "Caves of Steel" [wikipedia.org], which, if you remember, posited almost the exact cultural mores that the Japanese display today RE: privacy, conformity, and overcrowding.

Then look at the Taipei metro system. It goes just about everywhere in the city, funnels massive numbers of people around, and isn't as crowded as the ones in Tokyo. It's smooth and pleasant to use, and generally cheaper than driving. Overcrowding is not a necessary part of a smoothly functioning metro system.

No, because the American car companies paid to destroy commuter rail in the early part of the 20th century and, consequently, even most cities in America, where mass transit would generally be most effective, are designed around the car, and built for the car as a dominant form of transportation. People find that the car works best because most of America is designed expressly for that to be the case.

Reversing that is going to take several trillion of dollars of infrast

See, if you are content to only go to destinations that CalTrain services, things are better than BART. Especially the old-but-slightly-bumpy gallery cars where those of us who wanted to engage in quiet intellectual pursuits like reading or sketching can do so upstairs without a person to rub shoulders with, life is good.

After losing 20 lbs and actually reaching a fairly good level of physical fitness for the first time in my nerdly life, I'm fairly convinced that it's not just about mass transit. It's ab

I like private transport - a lot. I just think that it has its place, and that place is no where near 100%. From my time in Japan, I'd say it's less than 10%.

From my time in the U.S. suburbs, I'd say it's closer to 100%. And from my time in Seattle, San Francisco, and Chicago, I'd say it's still closer to 100%.

Now, bear in mind, I'm a suburbanite. I was born in the suburbs. I've lived there my entire life. I find the crowds in cities very much not to my taste. The majority of Americans feel this way, if their population distribution is any measure.

I remember sitting on a bus out in Seattle, traveling from U of W's campus back to my hotel on the water front, wondering if the group of loud, obnoxious thugs whose every third word was "nigger" were going to shoot someone for looking at them the wrong way. I was on the Metra in Chicago a few weeks ago, while some drunk guy puked all over the floor. Repeatedly. Out in San Francisco, it seemed like I couldn't get on a bus for more than a couple minutes without some bum asking for money.

See, I've now lived in London for five years and have hardly seen anything like that, and I use public transport most days, and most weekends, and often at night at the weekends. I assume you don't use it very often, yet still saw trouble? The problem is with American public transport, and it's because only the poorest people use it and no one cares to fix it.

I've once seen someone puke on public transport -- it was actually in the lift going back to street level after I got off the last subway train to go

It also pisses me off to think that, here I am stuck with thousands of other people, all heading the same direction, but all in their own inefficient vehicle. Why can't I just be on a train? At least then I could read a book or check my e-mail during my transit.

It really depends on your definition of inefficient. Go ride the train sometime. It's as "stop/start" as the highway in peak hour, no matter what time of day it is. The train also tends to go the long way around to where-ever you want to go.. taking longer even if it wasn't stopping every 3 minutes.

You want to read your book or check your email during the transit? Do you want to sit down while you're doing this? You can scratch that idea, if everyone else is catching the train too then there's a good c

It also pisses me off to think that, here I am stuck with thousands of other people, all heading the same direction, but all in their own inefficient vehicle. Why can't I just be on a train? At least then I could read a book or check my e-mail during my transit.

It really depends on your definition of inefficient. Go ride the train sometime. It's as "stop/start" as the highway in peak hour, no matter what time of day it is.

Not really. It only stops at stations, which seems to me to be less stopping than cars, which have to stop at most junctions, many traffic lights, pedestrian crossings, and for other cars (i.e. traffic).

The train also tends to go the long way around to where-ever you want to go..

So do the big highways...Part of the reason I live where I do is it's near a railway line that means I don't need to change trains to get to work. I expect people also choose to be near a major road so they can drive to work more directly.

taking longer even if it wasn't stopping every 3 minutes.

You want to read your book or check your email during the transit? Do you want to sit down while you're doing this? You can scratch that idea, if everyone else is catching the train too then there's a good chance that you'll be standing.

Japan isn't Tokyo. Tokyo may have an awesomely efficient and convenient rail system that gets you pretty much anywhere you want on-time, but if you go to regular places, you're lucky if they have one, let alone two or three stations. Even a fair-sized city usually won't have a great subway or train infrastructure, just a few stations on the main line that happens to pass through down. A lot of people just get around by bike, foot, bus, or car.

Some towns just have stations that are shacks by the track -- no people at the gate, just ticket machines and a platform. They trust you to drop your ticket stubs in the box before you leave.

I bow to your experience - the smallest station I was at still had the magnetic ticket reader at the gate. And you're right - I brought a lot of this criticism on myself by saying Japan instead of Tokyo. I erred.

I still say that while I was focusing on the Bay Area, in a broader sense, you've made my point - if the city is too small for a good rail infrastructure, buses will also do. I live in a moderately populous area that has neither decent rail nor bus service - but they think that they do.

Mass transit is the answer - not just BART - REAL mass transit. I cannot stress enough that if one travels to Japan and sees for oneself how fucking cool and efficient the Japanese mass rail system is - billion dollar proposals like this would die at conception.

Mass transit is the answer - not just BART - REAL mass transit. I cannot stress enough that if one travels to Japan and sees for oneself how fucking cool and efficient the Japanese mass rail system is - billion dollar proposals like this would die at conception.

No. Sorry. Mass transit is part of the solution, but it is not the solution.

The problem lies in the inherent difference between mass transit and public transit and most people don't recognize the difference.

Mass transit focuses on getting mass number of people between various high density locations. These are your medium to heavy rail systems. For the Bay Area that's BART and CalTrain.

In places like Japan, where they have high population densities, it works great. There's a reason places like Tokyo, Moscow, New York, London, etc., can have fantastically efficient mass transit systems: they have the population density to deal with it.

Public transit on the other hand focuses on being a 'vehicle replacement' so people in lower density areas can actually give up their cars. This is taxies up through light rail. Fewer passengers, but more convenient and more versatile.

Bay Area geography doesn't really favor Mass Transit. It's why BART basically sucks for commuting. With the exception of MUNI linking well to BART, most of the Public to Mass links suck.

The whole electric car infrastructure is an expensive idea, and it talks to the whole "chicken and the egg" problem. Without infrastructure, electric cars are useless. Without electric cars, no one will build the infrastructure. This is actively solving the infrastructure problem ahead of the cars.

Is it a good idea? Ultimately, yes. Is it the right idea? That's a lot harder to say. A massive bay area wide fleet of on-demand bio-diesel fueled hybrid shuttle buses might be better. But who's to say? Cars are a part of US culture partially because of our geography. We live in suburbia, which is inherently tied in with car culture.

Unless your mass transit plan includes re-arranging US cities and how people live in this country, it will never be the solution.

Bay Area geography doesn't really favor Mass Transit. It's why BART basically sucks for commuting. With the exception of MUNI linking well to BART, most of the Public to Mass links suck.

I'm an Australian, and I've traveled a bit and spent a lot of time in San Fran, using the BART and MUNI to get from my relatives place in Pacifica to various places around.

I agree it sucks for commuting, unless the place you want to go happens to be on a connected line on the BART/MUNI lines. Fortunately most of the places I've been going to have been (well, not Pacifica - it's a fucking $40 cab fare from there to Daly City which I discovered last time).

So why not rearrange the cities? The Bay area is still growing rapidly, it would seem, and the newer bits (I'm at the north edge of San Jose, for example) absolutely suck as places to live, because the population density is so low that there are no services. Nada. It's a thirty minute walk to buy groceries, a 50 minute walk to eat supper (with the possible exception of a Spanish language sports bar that sells quasi-pizza), there's nominally s Starbucks here, but it closes at, what, 8PM or something. The cit

I've only ridden on BART but from what I hear it's the only good public transportation here. Everything else is supposedly crap. And the high speed rail, while cool, is probably not going to be finished for a decade or so at the earliest.

I was discussing the Bay Area. You will note that it's size is comparable to the Tokyo area and has a lower population. I am not referring to the cross-country lines of Honshu island, I'm referring to the KEIO and JR lines.

What I propose most certainly DOES fucking scale - very, very well. So, yes - by all means - let's use the right tool for the job and implement proven solutions from similar circumstances.

The people who don't use rail for cross country shipments do so for a reason, the same reason people stopped using it for transport in a serious manner, its too damned unreliable. Not inherently so, but the companies can't get their act together, and shipping something over rail is a good way to get it there somewhere between tomorrow and next month, with no idea which until the package arrives.

Bought 'em up, tore 'em up - so we could buy more cars and tires and gas.

I dislike the counter-arguments in the Wikipedia article that the move to buses were more efficient - the light rails were already in place, so a working system was dismantled in favor of a competing one.

Recently San Francisco, San Jose, and Oakland unveiled a massive concerted effort to become the electric vehicle capitol of the United States.

Capitol [reference.com] is a proper name, originally of a temple and the hill it sat on, but now often of a building that serves as the seat of a legislature. Capital [reference.com] means the city that serves as the seat of government. It also means the chief city of a region, and is the metaphorical sense intended here.

Even if submitter didn't know the difference, a professional editor should have. Good thing we don't have any of those around here, huh?

Anyone remember that California energy crisis from a few years ago? What exactly has been done (besides firing some politicians and energy execs) to help produce more power?

I'm not sure its a great idea to be building HUGE structural draws like this into (what will eventually become) every major city worth a damn, without a plan for how to power all of it. The "not in my backyard" problem must be solved first.

Personally, I would like to see more R&D into synthesizing chemical fuels, efficiently, from electricity. I just think that, for convenience and power, it's hard to beat chemical fuels. The trick is, can we efficiently produce any type of relatively safe chemical fuel using electricity. The 'obvious' solution is creating hydrogen from water (gas or liquid), but hydrogen has it's own problems, such as difficulty in containing it safely.

I took a look at the proposed California infrastructure plan. I suspect that part was drawn up by someone unfamiliar with the state.

Interstate 10 (east from Los Angeles through suburbia and on to Florida) is missing. That's a major commute corridor for 100 miles or so east of LA. Much more than I-80 between San Francisco and Sacramento.

Their layout for battery exchange stations looks to have been created by saying something like "every 40 miles on the few freeways we identify" instead of looking at popu

[...] unveiled a massive concerted effort to become the electric vehicle capitol of the United States.

Sorry to be the spelling Nazi, but (from the New Oxford American Dictionary):

Capitol1 the seat of the U.S. Congress in Washington, DC.â ( capitol) a building housing a legislative assembly : 50,000 people marched on New Jersey's state capitol.2 the temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline Hill in ancient Rome.

ORIGIN from Old French capitolie, capitoile, later assimilated to Latin Capitolium (from caput, capit- âheadâ(TM) ).

Either battery replacement, or plug-ins. We don't yet have a standard as to how to recharge these cars.

110v...220v...different plugs...different acceptable recharge times.Replacement batteries will require some sort of mechanical/robotic system to do it. Your grandmother is not going to wrestle a 100lb battery pack out of the car. And none of the elec cars I've seen have easily (no more than 5 mins) replaceable packs.

Finally, we have the apartment problem. If I live on the 4th floor, how do I ensure my car won't be unplugged overnight by some miscreant on the street.

All of these can be overcome. But spending billions to build out a grid for this without the standardization in place will fail.

I really, REALLY want this to succeed. But this effort may be premature.

put a rectenna in the base of the car, and charge by induction from underneath the pavement (pick a frequency that meat doesn't absorb very well). As an added bonus, if your electricity is cheap enough, you can design highways to deliver wireless power so the cars only need batteries with 30 miles or so of capacity.

Billing and activation based on transponder identification, of course.

While it would seem they are "on the ropes" so to speak, Big-3 Auto often has a lot to say when it comes to getting their will. They had a lot to do with the failure of competing technologies including passenger rail. The next argument may be "now we REALLY can't compete because we don't have an electric car! give us more money and time to sell off the rest of our SUVs and we will consider making an electric car provided it has a high enough profit margin and a controlled 3rd party parts market."

The scheme involves a number of ground-breaking proposals to encourage the adoption of electric vehicles, including speeding up the installation of electric vehicle charging outlets on streets and in homes, and offering incentives for companies to install charging stations in the workplace.
On streets?!? Gee, what could possible go wrong with that... nobody would be tempted to, say, unplug that cable from your car and steal the power you are paying for, now would they? How many companies (other than govern

The Bay Area would be perfect for bikes. They are far more energy-efficient than EVs (by like 2 orders of magnitude), the Bay Area is largely flat, it suffers from massive congestion (EVs don't even begin to address that), it doesn't get too warm, it doesn't rain much all summer long, the societal cost of maintaining the facilities to park a few million cars are devastating, a few of the people who live there could use some exercise...

I like bikes even in hilly, rainy country, but there they have some disadvantages. It's utterly absurd that somewhere as perfect as the Bay Area doesn't encourage cycling.

Maybe. Over long distances of open highway during non-rush-hour, absolutely. Around town, false. In city, at distances under 5 miles or so, I'm usually faster than a car. Some of that is that a car might not be able to park very close to the destination...

require your wmployer have a place to change

Does your employer not provide a restroom?

require you don't need to carry much

Of course--but you should define "much". Panniers carry what I need most of the time, and some people use trailers for the really big stuff.

are more dangerous*

Completely [bicycleuniverse.info], absolutely [kenkifer.com] wrong. Or check the numbers yourself, but making claims that go against the evidence just makes you look like an idiot.

can't pick up very many people

Have you ever counted how many trips see no more than one person in the car? So use a car for the 10% of trips in which you need to pick up someone who doesn't have his own transportation. Would you like to drive and park on roads with 10% of the traffic that you see now?

can't get groceries

Bullshit. Where do you get these half-baked ideas? 95% of my grocery runs are by bike, to a store about 5 miles away. The only reason I tend to take longer than I do when driving is that I take a scenic route because biking is fun.

impracticable in an emergency

Can you be any more specific? Also, please take into account the fact that the more people bike instead of driving, the fewer emergencies there are.

require good health.

They also create it, in a bunch of ways, while cars destroy it both passively (no exercise) and actively (pollution, stress, accidents). How is this a problem? Also, as I noted, the Bay Area is largely flat, and therefore biking does not require especially good health after all.

What makes the government think it knows which technology is good for reducing carbon emissions? Just put a cap on pollution, punish polluters, fix the market failure by capturing external costs associated with pollution, and let the market fix the problem efficiently and cheaply.

Just because your car is powered by electricity doesn't mean the electricity was generated without the use of fossil fuels. Might I remind the greens that most electricity in the U.S. is (unfortunately) still produced by burning coal? The same coal combustion which causes acid rain?

There ain't no such thing as a free lunch (but solar and tidal energy are as close as we'll get).

It's really so sad that "hybrids" have hijacked the public's perception of what a fuel efficient vehicle here in the US.

In Europe fuel costs 4 times as much as it does over here right now. The majority of vehicles sold in Europe are diesels. You almost never see a Prius. In fact, you'll see them ridiculed in the automotive press as an example of American idocy more often than you'll see them on the roads over there.

In Europe fuel costs 4 times as much as it does over here right now. The majority of vehicles sold in Europe are diesels. You almost never see a Prius. In fact, you'll see them ridiculed in the automotive press as an example of American idocy more often than you'll see them on the roads over there.

Europe has higher fuel costs because they tax the fuel heavily to support mass transit and other things that make it so that people don't need to use their cars constantly. This rather changes what kind of car it

Diesels are drastically better than gas vehicles on CO2. In fact, it's as much their forte as mpg. If you're currently driving a gas car but are concerned about your CO2 production, perhaps the least you could do is switch to driving a diesel until you can afford an EV.

Do you have a reference for this? The Diesel cycle's inherent thermodynamic efficiency is no better than that of the Otto cycle used in a normal gasoline engine. In practice, it's actually slightly *less* efficient, except at idle, where it wins hands-down.

There is an easily comprehensible reason that diesels go 15% further per unit volume of fuel. It is because diesel is 15% denser than gasoline.

From some back-of-the-envelope calculations it seems that we already have enough power generation and electrical distribution in the Bay Area and in most places to charge Chevy Volt-like cars overnight on our existing 220V. It might be nice to charge faster than 8 hours, or at work as well as home, but I don't see this as a major technology adoption problem.

The grid and power stations are designed to deliver about 3KW average to each household during peak hours in the summer heat. A single 220 outlet typically can deliver 3KW continuously. A Chevy Volt will need no more than 20KW hours of juice to charge. The math works.

The grid is barley taxed during the night, so this is a match made in heaven. The build-out we really need is an interstate-HVDC grid to deliver renewable power across the country from wherever it's generated. This can't be done at the state level, and will require action by Obama.

The build-out we really need is an interstate-HVDC grid to deliver renewable power across the country from wherever it's generated. This can't be done at the state level, and will require action by Obama.

It's also interesting that this happened less than a year after deregulation. Doesn't disprove deregulation in theory, but 40 years of regulation worked great, deregulation worked less than a year, the utility companies are, as you said, crooks.

Deregulation is a nice theory though. Not quite as elegant as communism, but it's a nice idea.

It's also interesting that this happened less than a year after deregulation. Doesn't disprove deregulation in theory, but 40 years of regulation worked great, deregulation worked less than a year, the utility companies are, as you said, crooks.

The rate to which utility companies have colluded on prices in the past is well known. In Australia rampant price fixing lead to government "ring fencing" and free market contestability regulations, and more choice for the end user. Power generation companies were no longer allowed to be power distribution companies. This was matched to an independent national electricity market and hub company that so far has done a great job as traffic cop IMHO. Have a look at http://www.nemmco.com/ [nemmco.com]

Really? Cause they had to pry the last EVs from the cold dead hands of their owners. Every salesperson who sold them had a larger waiting list than GM could manufacture. I bet that they discovered that EVs didn't need many replacement parts which is why all car companies are trying to avoid making EVs. There is a documentary about the EVs in the late 90's http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0489037/ [imdb.com] that you should watch. In fact, nothing in your post is factual correct about the situation exception for maybe the range problem.

Actually, I'm an energy conversions engineer who has designed several types of heat engines incuding, for example, a Stirling cycle engine. People working in my field spend all day every day trying to make everything energy systems more efficient. I know what I'm talking about.

For future reference, that movie was pure propaganda and sensationalism. It was basically a heinous pile of shit. It's sad that people think The Facts are what some ridiculous movie said.

Except you were not talking about energy conversion or engineering. You were talking about consumer demand. And you were wrong about those topics. People were willing to buy EVs. The car companies not not willing to sell them. If you want more proof, look at the prius. They sold very very well and the same type of people were lining up in 1999 to buy EVs. There is clearly demand, it is just that no large car company is willing to sell to that demand because they are worried about losing after market

I'll make it simple for you. 10 years ago car companies realized that EVs don't need as many after market parts as IC cars do. So ever since then, they have acted to prevent EVs from coming to market. Not evil but against the public good. You are blaming the consumers (who did want to buy the cars) instead of the car companies (who didn't want to sell them). Quit being intentionally dense.

They had to pry those EVs out of the hands of their owners because they were leasing them at a tremendous loss. The EV-1 program was done for research and to gain experience. The company subsidized every single lessee to the tune of something like 50%. When it became clear that the EV1 would never develop enough demand to be profitable, GM wasn't willing to continue massively subsidizing these people and supporting a miniscule fleet of cars simply out of the goodness of their hearts.

You talk about GM refusing to sell, service, or support EV1s outside of the tiny corner where they were running their project. Yet you completely ignore why they did this. I can only surmise that you are either being disingenuous or, more likely, you simply don't know.

So allow me to inform you. The batteries in the EV1 were extremely sensitive to cold, which ruled out most of the US due to the phenomenon we call "winter". There were also concerns about how they would respond to humidity, which ruled out all of the remaining places which get humid. Take a map of the US, eliminate all of the places which ever get cold or humid, and what remains is essentially GM's approved EV1 area.

This alone should tell you that the EV1 was not ready for full-scale sales and production. But it goes a lot farther than this. The EV1's design wasn't up to the rigorous safety requirements that any production car must meet. As a research project this made a great deal of sense. As a production car, obviously this simply could not work.

GM spent a billion dollars on the EV1, and leased them for half of what they would have charged if they had been trying to make money at it. A production-ready car that was up to production safety standards probably would have cost at least another billion dollars to design and certify, so jack that price up even more.

Of course GM never intended to sell any EV1s. That's pretty well implied by "research project". It was intended to give them experience for building an eventual production model electric car. The experience it gave them was, alas, that a production model would be impractically expensive. The truth of this should be obvious given that no car maker has ever built such a thing in the decade since the EV1 project was cancelled. Perhaps GM is colossally stupid. Given how much money they've been losing that proposition is pretty reasonable. But are all of them so stupid that they won't build electric cars even though everybody wants to buy them? No, they are not. Nobody is building electric cars because technology and demand simply haven't met yet.

I have no idea why you're comparing the EV1 to the Insight and Prius. The Insight and Prius are hybrid cars. That is, they have a gasoline engine and a small set of batteries to augment it, as an efficiency measure. The EV1 was a fully electric car, which is an utterly different kind of machine altogether, one which simply was not (and is just barely getting there now) ready for prime time.

Except that GM's experiment with them showed that they could not be sold at anything remotely approaching a profit. Nothing to do with aftermarket parts, and pushing on with such an obvious boondoggle would not do anything for the public good. But believe what you like....

Given that EV1 production ceased nearly a decade ago and no major car manufacturer has seen fit to take up the cause, I'm going to have to say that electric cars probably weren't going to be profitable at the time, considering that none of them seem to think that they could be profitable now. Perhaps they're all a bunch of morons, but I doubt it. I can believe one of them being stupid, or several of them, but all of them? No way.

It's telling that the real successes for alternative cars in the past decade ha

Get our screwed-up tort system fixed and perhaps this stuff could have happened. As it stands now, having a few hundred experimental vehicles on the road is a tremendous liability risk. GM was willing to take that risk when it was part of a program designed to lead to a production-worthy car, but once that program ended the risk became unacceptable.

That's how everything works in the US. Things start in the cities and then the rest of the nation eventually catches on. California has been demanding higher efficiency appliances for decades now and because of the vast purchasing power of the state manufacturers are forced to meet our demand. This in turn allows other states to have the option to purchase those more efficient appliances, though it appears most opt for the cheaper up front appliances as opposed to the long run cheaper more efficient appl